AbstractsChemistry

Calixarenes are a class of macrocyclic compounds that have garnered interest in large part because of their ability to form host-guest complexes with various types of molecules. For all of the studies of complex formation by calixarenes, most of the work to date has concentrated upon the smaller calixarenes, and little is understood about the relationship between the complexes formed when in solution and that observed in the solid state. The first part of the study, presented in Chapter 3, is of the solid-state properties of two of the larger calixarenes, and in comparison to other reported structures reveals patterns to the observed conformations both in the solid state and in solution. The formation of metal complexes has also been investigated and has focused extensively upon the metals as guests. Thus, the ability of the calixarenes to act as ligands in inorganic complexes has been virtually untapped, despite the polyoxo binding site they can easily provide, and very few metallocalixarenes have been reported. The second part of this study goes beyond the simple solid-state properties of such compounds, and involves the synthesis of several metallocalixarenes as part of a project directed at the functionalization of calixarenes with the components of a class of catalysts known to polymerize various olefins. These catalysts, commonly referred to as Ziegler-Natta catalysts, are introduced in Chapter 4. The new compounds presented here – three new aluminocalixarenes in Chapter 5 and a new titanocalixarene in Chapter 6 – were synthesized so as to contain some of the same components observed in several of the other catalysts. These new compounds have been characterized crystallographically as well as through proton and multinuclear NMR, and observed conformational patterns are discussed.